"...it must be really nice to have the refs and the NHL kissing your ass every time you play because you have Crosby on your team and they desperately want you to succeed because of that fact...."

And also they give us a wonderful breakdown of how each penalty on the Rangers was shady.No mention of the blown icing call on Crosby, which was obviously the NHL covering their tracks in this league-wide conspiracy.

Repeatedly going after people with whom you disagree will get you in trouble.It's just an unhealthy way to live.

So we'll give Ken Campbell of [ The Hockey News ] a pass when he ranks Ray Shero13th overall in his recent GM rankings.

Opinions among hockey people vary wildly on whether or not Shero overpaid at the trade deadline for Marian Hossa, a player he has almost no chance of signing long-term if he wants to keep the rest of his current roster intact. It says here he did not overpay, but even if he did, you have to admire the gumption he showed in committing so much to a rental player. Unless, of course, you believe ownership or other outside forces were driving the bus on this deal. Shero obviously inherited a very good situation, but GMs with bigger egos would have been determined to put their stamp on the team and risk ruining a good thing. Shero has not done that, all the while tweaking things for the better.

The shocking part is that Brett Hull's regime in Dallas and Paul Holmgren in Philadelphia ranked higher.

The best thing about games on NBC, and it's something we will be used to in the coming weeks, is the plethora of microphones near ice level.
Someone pulls up on an offensive rush, and the screeching from the skates makes your cat run into a wall.

You yourself wanted to run into a wall when the Rangers capitalized on an early powerplay.
The dreaded shot from the point resulted in a rebound scramble, and Dubinsky banged it home. 1-0.

Dick

The Penguins have still not boxed Dubinsky out.

On the next shift, Hossa made a move in the neutral zone that should be a proper noun.
Crosby and Dupuis almost hooked up for a goal, but no dice.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of the Nation waiting, a semblance of playoff physical play appeared when the Pens forwards started checking everything that moved.

There were so many hits, Casey Kasem stopped by to make a top 40 list.

Creepy

What teams will have to realize is that the bottom two lines will muck it up, and out of nowhere, the pace will change when Crosby or Malkin jump on.
And that's what happened for the Pens first goal.

Instead of dumping it in, Orpik calmly carries it through the neutral zone and gets it to Hossa, who jobs it Sid.
Sid does his business, gets it to Dupuis.
It hits his skate and lands on Hossa's stick. No questions asked.

1-0.
[Jschiff, Esq.]

We're used to Erik Christensen getting that shot and breaking a pane of glass behind the net.

Things got better when Petr Prucha went to the box for roughing.
A new wrinkle in the NHL is that you have to explain every penalty to Brendan Shanahan.

What a baby

The Harlem Globetrotters come on for the power play.

It was just a mud power play.
They don't want to be cute, so they just blast it from the point when there's four Rangers below the dots. It was cleared every time.

Everyone's heart stopped when Crosby went Mach 8 into the Rangers zone to beat out an icing call.
He gets down to the puck and has a hamburger before Rozsival can get there, but it's still an icing.
Sid shows his dismay with a bellowing, WHAT!!!!????!?!? MYEYEARRGGGHHH!!

Bing jamming on the brakes like that means the high-ankle sprain is long gone.

NBC eventually showed the icing.
Maybe one of the worst calls in sports history.

P.S. -- Let the head referee that's right there call it.
His head isn't moving and his vision isn't distorted, as compared to the linesman who's frantically trying to get back there.

Whatev.
Gonchar hit Malone with a great headman pass later, and it resulted in a penalty.

Crosby tried flying into the zone and gets slashed.
That's been a penalty for about 200 years.

No one can hear the whistle blow from all the whining from Brendan Shanajoke.

A delectable 5-on-3 PP ensued.
And once you saw Malkin cocking his stick at the right point, you knew it was just a matter of time.

After Bing almost put one home on the doorstep, it was Malkin Time again.
Unreal laser from the point.

2-1.

[Ryan C]

Don't slash Sidney Crosby.

Bing may have played the final 7 minutes of that first period.
MAF made some key saves to end the first.

The Phantom of the Mellon made an appearance early in the second when Hossa got sent off for hooking.
That penalty was killed with relative ease.
Did Sean Avery even play in this game?

The stars aligned after the kill, literally, when Malkin, Bing, and Hossa found themselves on the ice at the same time.

Kennedy took a jobber penalty, and the Pens had to go on the kill again.
This was just karma evening things up from that two-man advantage in the first.
The PK unit gets ready.

A scare or two later, Kennedy was out of the box.
Big saves by MAF there.

Even after two Penguin penalty kills, the Rangers still had the momentum.
But that momentum dissipates when you can't beat a goaltender who is red hot.

Malkin had a rush towards the end of his shift, but he had just worked a 20-hour shift tarring the roof of the license-plate factory and was dead tired.

And then the lightning we missed so much for the past two months appeared when Crosby absolutely flew through the neutral zone, with Dupuis KEEPING PACE.
No dice though.

Things were going swimmingly after that.
And then Malkin got jobbed behind the Rangers net.
Dubinsky got his skate up in Malkin's face.
Malkin knew something was wrong immediately.

He had gotten cut in the face, but he stayed behind in the Rangers zone while play went on.
It wasn't pretty.
The refs don't blow the whistle because they are mad at Malkin for missing the awards ceremony last summer.

Bing's line came on and wreaked havoc.
Sydor eventually drew a penalty.

Sickeningly, and it was done with humor, NBC had to remind you when they came back from commercial to change your Gillette razor blades.
100% classless.

Next thing you know, NBC will broadcast a game where the Capitals are fighting for their playoff lives, and it will be sponsored by AIDS research.

At the tail end of the period, Jordan Staal gets the job done and draws a penalty.

Most of the power play disappears with no sign of offense.
Everyone is stunned about Malkin and can't get anything going.
Things get a little feisty, so the Pens have to bring in the van.

Side-note blog

[Donnie S.] sent this in.

Apparently this is a van on the campus of CMU:

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THIRD PERIOD

As the third period is about to start,
We get a live update on the "Zurich Open," so that some A-hole in a country club somewhere can watch Lee Trevino sink a putt.

At the start of the third, we see Malkin smiling back on the ice.
Dubinsky came over and expressed his concern.
But then the puck dropped.

The Pens survived an early-period scare when Rozsival feathered it through the crease, but it ended up doing nothing.

Sidney Crosby got high sticked by Pedro Gomez.
He threw his head back, but that is what most people do when they get hit in the face.

But even more mystifying is how Jaromir Jagr could have begun his career in Pittsburgh, developed into a superstar here and never learned the diving and face-clutching and horrified equipment shedding that has been part and parcel of Pens hockey ever since Mario Lemieux decided to shame the league into enforcing its obstruction penalties by embarrassing all officials who didn’t do so.

WOW

Rather than have a rebuttal for this Ranger fanboy,
we'll just say this:

He has a comments section.
Go have a fun time.

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Anyways...
The powerplay didn't result in anything.

After some jobbing, Father Time was trying to find his car keys.
Around that same time, Marty Straka heads to the penalty box.
A weight machine falls on him and he doesn't return for the rest of the game.

A potentially game-changing power play was on the way.

The story of the power play was the Pens finally getting a shot.
A second later, that was upstaged by a surreal save by Lundqvist.
The power play was gone again.

With 6:30 left, it was still tense times because the Rangers were one sick pass and shot away from tying this game up.

And a test of mettle came when Kris Letang takes his first penalty since the 8th-grade picnic.

It was here among 17,000 screaming Mellon Arena fanatics that the Pittsburgh Penguins found out who they were.

The power play was here and gone.
And there was 3:00 left.

After some scares, there was one minute left.
Why the Rangers didn't take a time-out there, no one knows.

But it was moot.
A demoralizing final nail into the coffin makes it 3-1.

Hossa worked down deep and got it back to the point, which was open all game.
Scuderi does his job, gets it to the net.
Lundqvist wanted to move the puck along, but he couldn't grasp the puck.
No one froze it, and Talbot snuck in to put it home.

Ranger fans =Stunned

The Rangers take a penalty right after that.

Game.

STATS

Malkin: 1G

Hossa: 1G

Bing: 2A

MAF: 26 saves

MISCELLANEOUS

Really give it up for Ryan Whitney. Most people would purposely not try at the forward position to show it's not their forte. Whitney is doing the job.

The USS Hal Gill was solid, despite HCMT breaking up the Gill/Letang pairing.

Valeri Kamensky scored at 3:55 of overtime, giving the ColoradoAvalanche a 4-3 victory and ending the 14-game unbeaten streakof the Pittsburgh Penguins, who played without injured superstarMario Lemieux.

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